Theories Of Grief And Loss

Almost everyone in the world experiences an event which can be considered as a loss. It is the disappearance of something or someone important to an individual, grief is the natural response to the loss, people feel a range of emotions when they suffer a loss such as shock, panic, denial, anger and guilt. Death is one of the major events associated with loss but there are many others that occur which can also have a negative effect on someone’s life by impacting in various ways.

Theorists like Lindemann claim that there are five phases that are normal to go through in grieving: somatic disturbance, preoccupation with the deceased, guilt, hostility or anger, and difficulty with everyday tasks. Kubler-Ross identified the commonly recognized and accepted stages of grief

Five stages of grief were identified by Dr. Kubler-Ross; Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Everybody will grieve in their own unique way, and the order of the five stages may differ from everybody. Some people may not even go through certain stages at all. Grieving helps us get through a rough time whether is finding out a love one has passed or even your own dying process.

During the denial stage, people tend to resist the idea that they are going to die, or that their loved one is really gone. It can be hard to believe that their friend or family member won’t be calling or coming to work anymore. The anger stage may be directed at the person who has died, or at themselves for not being able to prevent the death. Once someone is in this stage, they are able to recognize their ability to get through the tough time. Sometimes, someone dying who is in the anger stage will lash out and express anger at people in good health, family members, God, and many other

According to American psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, the five common stages of grief include denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance respectively. However, humans are quite fascinating creatures as we might alter the order in which every stage hits us. Nevertheless, one thing is for certain, in every stage of grief of any kind, we must come to terms and accept the cards that are casted in front of us; and it’s entirely up to us how we choose to play them.

Every sane person will experience grief or bereavement at one stage of their life. Bereavement is defined as a state of intense grief, such as after the loss of a loved one. In this essay we will explore the various causes of bereavement and the effects it can have on an individual’s life.

Elizabeth Kübler-Ross termed the stages of grief as denial, bargaining, anger, depression and acceptance and she proposed that these stages overlap and do not follow a certain order (Axelrod, 2016; Steeves, 2002). The stage of denial is accompanied by a state of disbelief and individuals will tend to

Grief is the natural reaction to a major loss such as the demise of a loved one. The grief has many components such as physical, emotional, social, mental, and spiritual. A person can feel grief during a serious, long-term illness or with an incurable disease. The symptoms can be a great level of depression, gloominess, guilt, and hopelessness. The common grief responses feelings include numbness, shock, anger, anxiety, loneliness, fatigue, and yearning. The other common grief responses to physical feelings such as not being able to sleep, tightness in

As described by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, an American psychiatrist, persons experiencing loss go through general phases during this difficult time. Kubler-Ross refers to this process as the five stages of grief. These phases first include denial, followed by anger, then bargaining. Finally, after experiencing the first three phases, the individual will enter depression, and finally enter into acceptance (Patricelli, 2016). In some cases, these periods do not always occur in this exact manner, and are experienced differently according to each

The stages of mourning and grief are universal and are experienced by people from all walks of life. Mourning occurs in response to an individual’s own terminal illness or to the death of a valued being, human or animal. There are five stages of normal grief that were first proposed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book “On Death and Dying.”

The first stage of grief is denial. In this stage the death of the loved one is denied because of the shock. (Axelrod 2006) People have a hard time trying to cope so they deny it ever happened. They want to escape this devastating reality and they want life to go about as it always has so they settle for denial. When someone is in this stage of denial they feel as if the world is meaningless. They do not want to face the fact that their loved one no longer walks the Earth, they want to be comforted by the state of denial. Denying the death is the easiest way to cope. Denial can give off the feeling of protection. It gives us a way to cope. This stage is the stage of numbness. All emotion is gone in this stage. In denial the feelings of sadness and loneliness are not felt. When in denial people become emotionless so they can feel better on the inside. They would

Grief and its effects is considered in this paper with the purpose of better understanding how it affects a person. Grief is a natural reaction to loss and change which affects all aspects of a person’s life: the physical, emotional, psychological, behavioral, and spiritual. Grief is not expected but will be experienced in a variety of ways such as experienced, sudden, gradual or anticipated. While most people will experience loss at one time in their lives, not everyone responds in the same way or goes through the same process to recover and heal.

Grief is the act following the loss of a loved one. While grief and bereavement are normal occurrences, the grief process is a social construct of how someone should behave. The acceptable ways that people grieve change because of this construct. For a time it was not acceptable to grieve; today, however, it is seen as a necessary way to move on from death (Scheid, 2011).The grief process has been described as a multistage event, with each stage lasting for a suggested amount of time to be considered “normal” and reach resolution. The beginning stage of grief is the immediate shock, disbelief, and denial lasting from hours to weeks (Wambach, 1985). The middle stage is the acute mourning phase that can include somatic and emotional turmoil. This stage includes acknowledging the event and processing it on various levels, both mentally and physically. The final stage is a period of

In the first stage that I will discuss is denial. In this stage people may deny the reality of the situation by blocking out the words and hiding from the facts ("5 Stages of Loss & Grief | Psych Central," n.d.-a). For instance, someone could be diagnosed with some form of cancer. That person may not want to know because it might overwhelm them. So they would not want to know the reality of

The grief and loss theory has been criticised by Corr et al (1997) who stated that there is not real life evidence to prove that people do go through the stages one (1) to stage five (5). Also the theory was criticised for not acknowledging the limitations of the model, for example, people do not always go through all the five (5) stages. Another criticism of the theory is that using the word “stage” to describe the grieving process implies how inconsiderate it is as it forces the bereaved to internalise their feelings waiting for that “stage” to pass which will affect their life in the long